As Long as He Needs
by Breakinglight11
Summary: Steve thought that he'd give over the rest of his life to being Captain America- that he'd never be able to be anything else. But at the urging of his closest friend Bucky, he begins to reconsider going after the one thing he wanted for himself. Spoilers for "Avengers: Endgame."
1. Stones

Author's Notes: SPOILERS FOR ENDGAME.

This is the story of Steve returning the Infinity Stones to their rightful places in the timeline, and making the decision to take his own rightful place.

A followup to my previous Captain America story, "Have that Dance." Read at s/9849946/1/Have-That-Dance .

* * *

Steve would be the one to return the stones. Someone had to do it; Bruce had promised they would. They had to go back to preserve the time stream, Banner explained, both to where they had been taken from and when, to the very moment from which they disappeared. And Steve knew he the best man for the job.

A few of them had balked when he volunteered. "We have all the time in the world," Clint argued. "Can't we… take a breath for a minute?"

Steve could hardly blame him. All of them were raw still, after everything that had happened. It was hard to live through an apocalypse, even when you'd managed to turn things right again. Five years of it would not be shaken off in a few days. And even though they'd brought so much back of what had been taken, there still were consequences that could not be undone. Vision, Natasha, Tony— the wounds still gaped with the emptiness of their loss. After everything they'd gone through, the battles, the funerals, the struggle, it was only natural that it had left them all spent.

But even now, the work was not yet done. Not until the loop was closed and the stones were returned to their proper places in the timeline. Yes, with Pym's technology they could return to any moment at any time time. But Steve couldn't rest until he was sure.

Moreover, it had to be Steve. They had been through a war, for Christ's sake, and their bodies were battered as well as their souls. With his accelerated healing factor, within a matter of days he was nearly mended again, while everyone else was still recovering. Even Bruce, whose Hulk body usually regenerated at least as fast as Steve's did, was still struggling through the aftermath of having activated the stones. It made sense for it to be Steve. And so the others had to agree.

But even though he was physically whole, he couldn't say the same for the rest of him. A low ache remained in him, dull but pervasive, from somewhere in his bones or deeper. He felt stiff and heavy as he suited up, as if his body would not quite obey. It reminded him of right after his transformation, the first time he'd tried to pick up a pencil with his new hands.

Bucky came to him as he was getting ready, sidling up and looking Steve over with a concerned eye. "You all right?"

A reflexive affirmative came to his lips, but this was Bucky, who could always see right through him. "Yeah, it's just…" He sighed, dropping his head. "I'm tapped out."

Bucky nodded, corners of his mouth turning down. "I don't blame you. After everything you've been through."

"We've all been through it."

"Maybe. But doesn't change things for you."

"Doesn't matter. There's things to be done." Steve forced a smile, tipping his head to the side. "That's what Captain America's for."

Bucky regarded him. "You don't have to do this."

"Of course I do. It has to be finished."

"You could wait a while."

"No." Steve was surprised at his own forcefulness. "I need this."

"Need this?" Bucky echoed. "Why?"

Steve didn't know how to answer for a long moment. "Because… I don't know what else to do."


	2. Space

He would handle the space stone first. He wasn't sure of much at the moment, but of that he was certain.

They had free access to Pym particles now, and a kit had been assembled for his use during the mission, with any equipment he might need, from spec ops gear to supplies to the odds and ends particular to each stone's circumstance. The kit had then been handed over to the Pym-Van Dynes, to be shrunk small enough to fit into one of the pouches on his utility belt, and for the proper resizing device to be installed in his suit.

"Anything you need to access, select it here on the dial," Janet Van Dyne explained, demonstrating the way the device projected images of the items in the kit. "And it will revert to life size for you." She clasped the device, bonded with the time navigator, onto his wrist. "It will keep you more agile if you don't have to worry about wrangling your gear."

The stones themselves would be packed into a separate case, which he would have to carry by hand with him, full-sized. "Given what those stones can do," Hank Pym harrumphed. "We're not stupid enough to try to do anything with them."

Steve had to concede the wisdom of that, despite Pym's abrasive manner. He gathered the doctor had a reputation for being something of an ass, but still, Steve was struck by the way the married couple worked, his clear adoration for his long-lost wife. She was a startlingly beautiful woman, he could not help but notice, and with a serenity and self-possession that belied her ordeal of spending years lost in the quantum realm. What must it have been like for Pym, to have thought she was gone forever, only for her to be returned to him? It was so impossible, it must have seemed like a miracle.

Thor had even left Mjolnir with him, before he'd gone off to space with Rocket and Quill. "Are you sure?" Steve had asked, as the warhammer was pressed into his hands. But Thor had only hefted Stormbreaker over his shoulder, smiling through the bramble of his beard.

"You have a job to do. With your shield lost to you, I think you need it more than I do now."

Armed and ready, the rest was up to him. Six jumps for six stones. He could do them in any order, since he could skip to whatever point in the timeline he needed. Since it didn't matter, it was up to Steve to decide. And so he decided to first go back to Camp Lehigh in New Jersey 1970, where he'd ventured with Tony, where he'd caught that unexpected glimpse of Peggy.

Seeing her then had hit him hard. He had known that she was serving as director of SHIELD by 1970, a hard-won position despite having been a founding member. But for whatever reason it hadn't occurred to him that she might be there, that he could be within a few feet of the person he thought was lost to him forever.

He hadn't dared to reach out or speak, not with the mission on the line. He only stood and watched her then, taking in the details of her. Her quick, deliberate carriage, shoulders squared, stride certain. The shade of deep red lipstick, Besame Red Velvet, she favored all her life. She was the same beautiful, capable woman he'd always known, only mature now, confident, a force for good throughout the world. Some quick math would have told him she was fifty or thereabouts, but he knew by looking at her, if only for the striking resemblance she bore her daughter.

He'd met her daughter, Dr. Alexandra Sousa, on a few occasions, and seen her picture dozens of times more. She was a biochemist in DC, married with two children, as well as the author of a forensically correct mystery novel, which Steve had enjoyed even though most of the science had gone over his head. She was a striking woman, as vital and accomplished as her mother was, and Steve knew she could not stand the sight of him.

She was unfailingly kind to him, of course. The time he'd spent with Peggy's family, all of them had made an effort to make him feel welcome, particularly her son Stephen and his kids. They'd been startlingly lucky in the snap, at least when it came to Peggy's direct descendants. His namesake was her youngest, an accountant upstate, and his two boys had grown up fascinated with their family's connection to the legendary Captain America. But he could tell how uncomfortable his presence was, if only in flickers in Alexandra's eyes. It was clear enough that he felt it was best to keep a certain amount of distance from them, despite Peggy's making a point of trying to include him.

He commented once, during a visit before her Alzheimer's had taken serious hold, that he'd probably end up at Tony's again for Thanksgiving that year. "Even though he's going to be testing another upgrade for that electric carving knife."

"You know you have a standing invitation at Stephen's," she'd said. "Are you ever going to take him up on that?"

He'd sighed, unable to think of any way around telling her. "I think it would make Alexandra uncomfortable." He hated how petty it sounded. But it was the truth, and he was never going to lie to her.

"That girl." She made a sound of frustration. "Life is messy. I won't apologize for mine not being neat enough for her comfort."

"Please don't blame her. I sure don't." Mentally he was kicking himself; the last thing he wanted was to come between her and her daughter. How was Alexandra supposed to feel about him? Peggy's grown daughter, mother of her grandchildren, having to deal with her mother's old flame from three-quarters of a century ago, only a handful of years older than her own son. For her, for her family, he was something that was never supposed to be. A memory, a face in an old photograph, not a man living, breathing, and hurting right in front of her, crushed by the reality of the life Peggy had lived without him. That was not Alexandra's responsibility to bear.

And so he pulled back, as much as he could stand to. He still went to see her— and he could never refuse her when she asked to see him, particularly throughout her decline —but never so much as to make her family feel the weight of his presence. He could not cause that much suffering just to dwell over something he could not have.

But he'd never managed to really let go. No matter what he did, no amount of steeling, logic, or physical distance. Such that when she died, at the respectable age of ninety-five, it ripped through him, even after all he'd prepared for, punching yet one more hole in a life that had already been riddled with them. How could he not have been ready for it? How could he miss someone he'd already lost almost a century ago?

He should have been passed this. He should have dealt with this, over the near decade and a half since his reality changed. He tried to put it aside, focusing instead on the more pressing matters in front of him, his responsibilities, the role he had to play for the world. But whenever the danger abated, whenever he returned to himself, that was all that in the stillness remained.

_Some people move on. Not us._

"I need this," he'd told Bucky. "Because I don't know what else to do."

Bucky had been silent a moment then, tugging at the glove on his metal hand. "Can I ask you something?"

Steve turned to look at him.

"What would you want to do, if you weren't Captain America?"

Steve stared. "What?"

"If you didn't have to do this," Bucky said. "If you could— do anything. Anything at all. What would you want to do?"

His voice strangled in his throat as absurd things occurred to him then, impossible things he should have long since let go. He tried to sweep them aside, reach for anything else. But there was nothing beneath it, and he lost all words staring into that void.

His friend was watching him, waiting for his response. He averted his gaze. "Come on, Bucky."

"No." The other man grew intense for a moment, then softened, voice dropping. "It's okay if the answer's her."

Even now, after all that time and everything they'd been through, Bucky knew him— knew him better than anybody. Steve turned to him, lip curling. "What do you want me to say?" he asked. "White picket fence, couple kids? Getting old and gray together?"

"What's wrong with that?"

"Because it's impossible." He swallowed hard. "She already had all that, and it wasn't with me. I missed my chance."

"Steve," his friend said, very seriously. "What if you didn't?"

He returned to the uniform of a serviceman, and though he knew his presence wasn't exactly unassuming, he kept his head down, his profile low. It was strange, Steve thought as he strode through the compound, how much of his life lead him back here. _The birthplace of Captain America_, the sign boasted out front— though not him, he'd told Tony, just the idea of him. The new body and the persona they'd built along with it. Somehow destiny kept calling him to this place. When the search for the stones led him to travel here with Tony. When hunting the corruption in SHIELD had him break in with Natasha. And when first he'd transformed into the man he was today— the first time Peggy had looked at him that way, the way that made her break decorum enough to reach out and touch him. The first hint he'd seen that someday she might love him.

At least, the first he'd been able to recognize. She'd never made him feel like she was looking at the body, the impossible Captain America form, instead of the man inside. He'd seen that picture of him she kept, on display on her desk even twenty-five years later. That it was of him as he used to be before the serum, just some skinny, asthmatic kid from Brooklyn, was quiet proof of that.

He knew where he was going this time. Tony had said he'd had to go into the basement laboratory area to find it, locked away in a containment unit. Steve remembered the place from his own exploration with Natasha, when they'd uncovered the presence of HYDRA lurking in the guts of the organization Peggy had worked so hard to build. He knew the proper containment unit by its broken lock, cut cleanly through by Tony just moments ago. His kit was equipped with a cubical glass case into which he would seal the stone. He wore heavy lab gloves for protection, and carefully laid the final square plane in to close it up. The cube glowed blue with the power of the space stone inside, appearing for all intents and purposes to be the Tesseract the world knew it as— the one for which he'd hunted down the Red Skull to destroy, for which he'd thought he would give his life. He was given momentary pause at what to do with the lock, since it had been cut through, but he crushed it together with a clenching of his super soldier fingers and decided that would be enough.

He should have skipped out of there then, set his watch for the next relevant destination. But he chose to return here first for a reason. He just needed to see her, see her one more time. He couldn't bear to leave without one last look.

He slipped out of the basement and reemerged onto the ground level. Striding across the yard, he moved with purpose toward her office. He wouldn't say anything, wouldn't draw any attention to himself, just lurk outside her window and take her in as she was, as she was meant to be. It would give him strength for the road ahead, he told himself as he entered the hallway leading to her door. He just needed to see her. Just one more time.

She wasn't there.

Not in the office, not the corridor. Nowhere.

His breath hitched in a sudden rush of emotion. For moments he darted this way and that, searching with frantic imprudence before he got a hold of himself. Desperation mounting, he strode through the warren of offices in that part of the building, head down, shoulders slumped, but eyes roving, praying to somehow catch a glimpse of where she'd gone to.

He froze at the sound of an elevator dinging, of voices nearing as they approached from another hall. It was a group of officers, speaking with a voice he was shocked to recognize. It was the woman that had spotted him and Tony, he realized, with the high hair and the badge on a chain around her neck.

Steve pressed himself into an alcove around the corner. "And the other one?" a man asked. "Did you get a look at him?"

She exhaled. "He was tall— very tall. Broad shoulders. White, dressed like a serviceman, with blond hair and a jaw like granite."

"You're certain?"

"Absolutely." The woman chuckled a little. "I'm not about to forget a man that looked like that."

Steve breathed deep, guts clenching. He looked about himself, at the closed office doors, at the windows with silhouetted figures moving beyond them. He could hear more footsteps approaching, coming at him from another angle. He gritted his teeth; there was nothing for it.

He set his watch and jumped.


	3. Power

The power stone was next. That would take Steve to Morag, the distant alien world where Nebula and Rhodey had attracted the attention of Thanos.

He had the coordinates from their trip, tweaked to arrive ever so slightly behind them. He burst on the planet into water and darkness, a harsh and rugged landscape lapped at by fathomless oceans and skittering with alien creatures. It took Steve a moment to get his bearings. The vista of Morag was strange and lonely, and he wasn't quite used to all this interplanetary stuff.

But more than that, he was wounded and shaken by his last moments in 1970. It should have be small, it should have been nothing. But his heart had been so set on that one last look at her, that to miss it felt almost a physical blow, leaving him bereft to a depth and power that shocked him.

Internally he berated himself. He'd been lucky to come across her the first time; that alone had been a gift. He shouldn't have expected any more; he should have been grateful. Instead, he felt emptier than ever. But Steve had a job to do, and if he'd learned one thing over the years of serving as Captain America, it was to put his own feelings aside when there was work to be done.

Steve opted to do this one in the quantum suit, though he doubted anyone would recognize his regular one out here. Again taking exquisite precaution, he sealed the power stone within the very Orb in which they'd found it, brought back by Rhodey on the last mission. Finally, he retrieved Mjolnir from within the miniaturized kit, wanting to have a weapon near to hand out in this unfamiliar place.

He'd gotten a briefing on the situation from Rhodes and Nebula. Morag was once inhabited many thousands of years ago, but all that remained of it was in ruins, the terrain all but consumed by the oceans that covered most of the surface. Peter Quill, ostensible captain of the ship and crew that Thor had gone off with, had come to a sealed temple on Morag during the periodic receding of the oceans, to steal the power stone on a bounty. It was their seizing the stone before Quill got to it that had alerted Thanos to their presence.

This meant Steve's timing had to be careful. He was to move after Thanos had taken Nebula captive, but before Quill came to put it on its intended path. They didn't know exactly how long they had between the two, but it was essential, Nebula stressed, that nothing stop Thanos from proceeding to travel forward from 2012.

"What about you?" Steve asked her. "I might be able to help you get away. Out of Thanos's hands."

"No," she growled. "You can't risk disrupting the timestream from there."

"Are you sure?" Rhodey asked, very gently. "We know what he did to you."

"Yes." Her expression, inscrutable at the best of times, only grew harder. "This is where Thanos finally fell. I was part of his coming— and you have to let him come."

Steve found himself hard-pressed to argue with that; it was too dangerous to risk any other way. All that remained then, was to avoid Peter Quill, so that the stone would be were he was expecting it at the proper time.

"But that shouldn't be too hard," Rhodes had said. "Quill's, well— he's…"

"An idiot," Nebula finished.

When Steve arrived, Quill was still in a heap where they left him, in a tangle of limbs and the cord of what Steve believed to be a Walkman player. From inside the metallic, insectoid helmet he wore, Steve could still hear something blaring through the headphones, some upbeat pop song. Something from the '70s or '80s, maybe, though his knowledge of music post-1940 was still a little spotty.

Steve took a moment to secure the perimeter and make sure the coast was clear— no trace of Thanos, no one around to interfere. He only knew Quill a little, but he wondered if everyone wasn't a little too hard on him, in their contempt for his heedless dancing through the Morag wastes. Steve personally kind of admired him for it, that fierce pursuit of joy where he could find it, no matter the hard times he'd come through. It was something that Steve himself had never been good at.

It struck him suddenly how more than just Thanos and Nebula had come forward in time— there was Gamora too, the green-skinned warrior woman who was so important to Quill. But if memory served, she had left before the two of them ever had a chance to encounter one another. What would that mean? From their recent efforts he knew the future was not so malleable as they'd feared, but what about this version of Quill— the man lying in an unconscious pile on the landscape, who had no idea he was never going to meet the love of his life?

Steve had to laugh at himself then. Love of his life? How could he know that for Quill? How could he know that for anybody? Not everyone thought about things in those terms. Not everyone had a love of their life. Still, the thought made him suddenly sad again, in a way that brought back the flood of emotion in the wake of leaving Camp Lehigh in New Jersey 1970. Was that better, then? The Gamora that had come forward in time had looked at Quill as if she never knew him. Was it better to love her and lose her, or to never know what you lost?

The coast was clear. There was no more time to waste. Steve turned and made for the temple door, striding past Peter Quill's insensate body on the way.

"Ugh… aw, Jesus."

He spun at the voice behind him. It was Quill, groaning back to consciousness, levering himself up from the tangle he'd collapsed in— with the power stone not yet in its place.

Steve froze for half an instant as Quill struggled to unlatch his helmet. Then he thought fast. He scrambled over and knelt beside the man, affecting a look of concern. "Are you okay, buddy? That was quite a spill you took."

"I did?" Quill looked around blearily, eyes at last coming to focus on Steve. He frowned in confusion. "What— what the hell happened?"

Steve pointed at the mouth of the temple, still gaping open as they'd left it. "I watched you come out of there, then you slipped and took a nasty bump on the head. Looked pretty bad there for a minute."

Peter's eyes were rolling toward to doorway as Steve dug into the pouch on his belt. "Oh, and by the way— I think you dropped this." And he handed over the Orb, power stone safely encased inside.

Quill stared at it for a moment, for once in his life struck dumb. "Oh. Okay, then— thanks!" He tossed and caught it once, then shoved it in the pocket of his coat.

Steve offered him a hand to help him to his feet. Peter squinted at him then, as if really looking at him for the first time. "Hey, who are you? What are you doing out here?"

Steve flashed a smile, the one they used to put in the ads for the war bonds. "Just passing through. Glad you're all right."

He gave Quill's shoulder an encouraging sock, then turned, making a beeline for the first rock formation that would take him out of sight. Behind him, he could distantly hear Peter exulting to himself. "Damn! Am I the best thief of all time or what?"

Steve chuckled, very quietly under his breath, then activated his watch for the jump.


	4. Soul

He would take care of the soul stone next. At first he'd meant to put it off, but now he wanted it over with.

The soul stone meant going to Vormir, "a dimension of death," as Nebula had put it. A barren rock spinning in the heart of the cosmos that housed one of the great ancient powers of the galaxy. The place where Natasha Romanov had given her life so that the universe could be whole again.

Along with the coordinates in space and time, Clint given him the story of what happened there— they'd met some nightmarish guardian figure, who had told them that the soul stone could not be claimed without cost. And so they'd struggled, each fighting for the right to die for the chance to bring back the people they loved. And because she was so fierce, because nothing stood in her way when she was on a mission, it was a fight that Natasha had won.

Steve's heart twisted to think of it. She had been a true friend to him over the decade-plus since he's awoken in the Twenty-First Century. When they first met, he had not immediately warmed to her, put off by her cold, clinical bearing and the way he could never quite tell if she was lying. But once they knew each other, once the front of her covert agent's efficiency fell away, he saw the person she really was, compassionate, principled, and fiercely loyal to her friends. In their time on the run, when their defiance of the Sokovia Accords had made them wanted criminals, he had relied on her a hundred times to watch his six and keep up his spirits. Enduring the hardships of those together had bonded them, as firmly as any soldier he'd served beside in war. And in the years since the snap, they had worked together to do what they could to carry on with the world against the overwhelming tide of despair. There were not many people in the world who could really understand what Steve had gone through in his life, but Natasha Romanov came closer than most.

And in turn, he had come to know her. Well enough to know that, despite all her service, she had never been able to see herself as a hero— or even a decent person, really. She had spent so long a tool of corrupt powers that a part of her always felt stained, a guilt that could not be washed clean. No matter what good she did, or how hard she fought for the people around her, it was as if she was forever trying to work off a debt that could never be repaid. No matter what, it never felt like enough. Was it that, he wondered, that had led to her path here?

Even Morag had not been so desolate as this. Nothing lived here, not a blade of grass nor a crawling insect. Mjolnir ready in his hand, Steve ascended the great looming cliff at the planet's center, gazing out over the barren vista. At the summit was a kind of platform, built out to the sheerest edge, topped with twin megaliths soaring from the peak into the sky. Vormir was a place of cliffs, bare, jutting edifices looming over dunes rising from gently lapping pools. Dense fogs rolled in and out, clouding the landscape from vision, and Steve could have sworn the topography shifted in their wake. A sense of dread pervaded, as if emanating from the very stones, rising with every step he climbed.

A ripple through the mist caused Steve to turn. A figure appeared, as if manifested straight from the landscape. It was vaguely human-shaped, swathed in a ragged hood and cloak that flowed in the low wind. "Stephen," it said, voice low and hollow. "Son of Sarah."

He stopped short. It was enough that it knew his and his mother's names. But was he crazy to think that he knew that voice somehow— and that it spoke with the ghost of a German accent?

The figure floated out of the shadows to where he could see it. "But better known to the world as Captain America."

Light fell across that horrific face— flat, skeletal, and red as flayed flesh.

Steve's heart skipped a beat in recognition. Johann Schmidt. Nazi. Red Skull.

He hurled the hammer on pure warrior's impulse. It sailed through Red Skull as if he were made of mist, then sailed back again as Steve recalled it to his hand. The wraith regarded him impassively as the haft smacked back into his palm.

"Peace, Captain Rogers," he intoned. "There is nothing you and I can do to one another anymore."

Steve circled around him, hackles only slightly lowering, as Schmidt regarded him beadily from the recesses of his skull. "I confess, I had not expected you and I ever to meet again. Of course, our destinies always were entwined, but still, I never though yours would lead you here."

"You?" Steve growled. "You're the guardian here?"

"For my sins," Red Skull murmured, his gaze tracking him curiously. "And look at you. Has a century not gone by? Still you are a veritable _Übermensch_— everything the _Reich_ sought to raise up. Yet you had no care but to martyr yourself on the altar of other men's wars. Whatever strange journey could have brought you here? If you've come for the stone, I'm afraid you're moments too late."

"No," Steve said flatly, clutching tight to the briefcase. He weighed the possibilities carefully before next he spoke. He wanted to interrogate Schmidt, understand just what it meant to find him here. But there was something more important he needed to ask. "If I gave it back— returned it to where it came from —could that reverse it? Could that—" His voice caught, just a little, in his throat. "Could it bring _her_ back?"

"The woman Natasha, daughter of Ivan?" Red Skull shook his head, the hood rippling about him. "She has made her sacrifice. Her bargain has already been struck."

Steve gritted his teeth, gorge rising. "So what about me, then?" he said at last. "What about that in trade? A life for a life."

Red Skull laughed, an echoing rumble that Steve more felt than heard. "Ah, beautiful boy. Still so keenly seeking your oblivion? There is not a day that goes by that a mother does not offer her life for her children, or stalwart soldier for the cause he serves. But this is beyond your power to remedy. When a soul is fled, there is no calling it back to the bonds of the flesh."

It was the answer he expected. Still, he stood there silent a long moment, wrestling with the fresh sorrow at the ripping of a wound so barely scabbed.

There was nothing else for it. Even Red Skull did not matter anymore. Steve knelt on the ground before the ghost of his old enemy and laid out the case. He unlatched it to reveal the four remaining stones, gleaming red, green, amber, and gold in their confines within.

He was not sure Skull could breathe in this form, but Steve swore he heard a sharp intake of breath. "_Mein Gott_. Once I would have given all that I am to possess what you hold." Schmidt chuckled again, mirthless and cold. "Though I suppose you could say that indeed I have."

"It goes back to its place. Not to me, not to you, but to where it's supposed to be." With a gloved hand, Steve extracted the soul stone, closing his fist protectively around it. "Where?"

Red Skull gestured, a sweeping of his spectral cloak. Steve ascended the steps, to stand between the great brick towers on the edge of the jagged cliff.

The drop was perfectly vertical, the cliff face sheer and almost without feature. A gray stone expanse sprawled before it, hard and unforgiving, with the shore of a rolling sea out some ways away, lapping softly against the bare rock. Clint's final word on the point had been vague, but Steve knew in his bones he was looking at the place where Natasha had died.

Steve lifted his eyes to the distant sea. With all his strength, he wound up and hurled, sending the stone careening through the darkness toward the water. It sliced through the gloom like a hurtling comet, before plunging down and disappearing beneath the waves.

He stood there a long time, staring out over the jagged precipice to the barren rock below. There was body, no sign of her at all; he supposed that was not how a place like this one worked. But he could not help but linger there, trying to hold onto the sense of her presence, the connection he'd had to his friend.

"Some people move on," he'd told her. "But not us."

She had been so low in the last few years— at least as low as he was. Natasha had given her whole life over to her work, to serving purposes greater than herself. But in the wake of the snap, it felt as if everything they'd been fighting for in the last fifteen years had all been for nothing. And if nothing they'd done to make the world a better place actually mattered… what else did people like her have to hold on to?

Could that have been it? Steve found himself suddenly wondering. Could it have been that she believed she didn't have anything else? She was such a vibrant soul, with so much to be and do within the world. But she kept returning to this. Did she really believe this was the best remaining purpose that her life could serve— to be burned on the pyre to keep the rest of them warm?

_Some people move on. Not us._

Could any different be said for him? Did he have any more to live for? His thoughts returned again to his conversation with Bucky, just before he'd left, about the hope for other things in his life.

"I missed my chance," he'd said to Bucky.

"But Steve," Bucky replied. "What if you didn't?"

He'd turned away and paced, unable to meet his friend's gaze. "I don't know, Bucky. You don't get second chances with this sort of thing. It's not how it's supposed to work."

Bucky laughed. "There's a lot of supposed to that hasn't had anything to do with us. Christ, look at us— a pair of super soldiers, a hundred years out of our time, dealing with aliens and wizards and— God know what else." He spread his hands, and his voice dropped. "And the fact is… you do have a second chance."

Bucky did not explain further, but it hung unspoken between them. He was about to travel through time, to any moment in the past he wanted. He could go back, back to their own time— back to Peggy, if he wanted, to tell her what he'd wanted to tell her since that day behind enemy lines in France in the thick of the war.

Every time it had been asked of him, he'd chosen that duty. From his enlistment, to his volunteering for Erskine's experiment, to the day he'd put that bomber in the ice, and every day beyond. As a soldier, a SHIELD agent, an Avenger, a man. To do the right thing, and what the world needed from Captain America. What right did he have to decide anything, to take anything for himself, that would turn him away from the world when they'd come to depend on him?

He struggled to explain it to his friend. "Wouldn't that mean… I was abandoning my responsibilities?" He swallowed. "It's… what I'm for. I don't know if I get to just… put it all down."

"Is that really all you're good for?" Bucky asked him, very gently. "Throwing yourself on grenades?"

Steve took one last look out over Natasha's final resting place. Then he breathed deep, set his watch, and left that lonely rock forever.


	5. Reality

Asgard was his next stop, this time to deal with the reality stone.

Despite the success of his last three returns, Steve found a growing sense of helplessness, of futility, that he couldn't seem to shake. The timeline was maintained, for well and for ill, and moving through those fixed events drove home to him just how much was beyond his ability to act on. Nebula's abuse, Natasha's death— he couldn't even manage one last glimpse of Peggy, for heaven's sake. All manner of suffering, his own included, laid out before him, and Steve couldn't change any of it.

The thought weighed heavily on him as he prepared for the next jump. He was returning to the day Thor's mother Frigga, the queen of Asgard, had given her life to protect the woman her son loved. Steve had asked Thor about his experience, before he'd gone off with the crew of the Milano. When he'd first come back for the reality stone, Thor had tried to warn her, to do something to avert what was coming. But Frigga would not even hear it, preferring to meet destiny as it came to her. Steve would honor that choice, but it felt like more of the same. Yet more pain and tragedy that he would have to simply walk away from, that he could do nothing about.

He would have to be stealthy this time; he had no disguise that would allow him to blend in here. He had been provided with a hypo into which to introduce the reality stone, so that he could— there was no other word for it —_inject_ it back into Jane Foster's body. But he wasn't exactly sure how to go about it, despite Rocket's thoroughly unhelpful attempts to crash-course him through it.

"It's _easy,_" the raccoon scoffed, flapping one of his little black claws. "You just got to get a little _hook_ into her, and then it's all a flick of the wrist." He tried then to demonstrate, in a complex series of gestures involving a firm, two-handed grip, twisting, and entirely more of his back thrown into it than made Steve comfortable. The effort was appreciated, but Steve felt no less in the dark than he had before. He was going to have to wing it, but for once he was grateful that he'd led a life where he'd had to get used to that.

Steve burst onto the scene in a flash that temporarily banished all concerns from his mind. He looked around himself, marveling. Asgard was even grander than he'd pictured, all sweeping stone arches, burnished vaulted ceilings, and marble floors polished to a mirror sheen. Steve tried to place it somewhere within his frame of reference in classical art— grand Renaissance paintings, perhaps, depicting the old philosophers gathered in soaring palaces of gold and stone. All of it overlooked a sweeping vista straight out of a fairytale, majestic structures nestled among misty green hills, running along the canyon bridged by the rainbow road of the Bifrost. It was so beautiful Steve was left breathless at the sight. Even the warhammer in his hand seemed to hum, somehow, as if it knew it was home.

Awe gave way gradually to sorrow as he remembered. This was Asgard as it had been, before its destruction along with most of its people. Thor's ancestral homeland, now lost to him forever.

A voice behind him shook him from his reverie. "Well, then. You're not quite who I expected."

Steve turned. A regal woman, grandly dressed with blonde hair piled high on her head, was regarding him with gentle curiosity.

He could not help but stare, momentarily at a loss. It was not the plan to speak to anyone here, or even to be seen. But it was too late for that; gathering himself together, he approached her and extended his hand.

"Beg your pardon. My name is Steve. Steve Rogers." Graciously she took it in both of her own. "Are you… Queen Frigga?"

She nodded. "And mother of Loki and Thor," she said, as if answering his unspoken question. She stared at him curiously a moment, eyes narrowing. "You've brought back the Aether with you? How did you come by it?"

"I'm a friend of Thor's," Steve told her. "And I'm here to return what he borrowed."

"Ah, yes." She beamed. "Tell me, how is my boy? Will he be well?"

"He's… healing, I think," Steve said after a moment. "He fought bravely. And he has friends to lean on, to see him through."

She exhaled softly as relief lit up her face. "The fates be praised. I am glad he's not been alone in this."

"It hasn't been easy," he admitted. "We've been through a lot, and there have been losses. But… none of us have been alone." His brows knit. "Can I ask, how did you know—?"

Frigga tapped her chin. "I have a touch of greater sight. It pierces through the veil a little, to allow for glimpses of the truth beyond." She moved in close and her eyes narrowed. With great gentleness, she reached up and touched the line of his jaw with her fingertips. "I see it has been a long, strange journey that has brought you here." Her hand dropped to his wrist to indicate his GPS watch. "And this is not the only way you've traveled through time."

She did not clarify, but Steve knew instinctively she meant the seventy years he'd spent in the ice. "Yes," he admitted. "And… it's been hard."

"I can imagine. I hope Thor has been a friend in turn— since I think you know something of each other's struggles." Her gaze traveled to the warhammer in his hand. "Mjolnir, though… that I did not expect." She did not ask him how he'd come to have it, though perhaps she didn't have to. Instead she chuckled. "It is good to see someone who is worthy."

Her words settled on him like a physical weight, so much so that his shoulders actually sagged. Worthy— it was enough to knock the breath from him and send tears springing to the corners of his eyes.

The queen's expression grew questioning; Steve gritted his teeth, shocked at the depth of his reaction. "I'm sorry," he said after a moment. "It's only… I don't feel it."

"Why?"

"Because… I'm thinking of quitting." It was the first time he'd said it out loud, to anyone, even to Bucky— that he actually was considering walking away from the responsibilities of Captain America.

The moment he said the words he felt sick, disgusted with himself. It was selfish, cowardly of him, to want to walk away when there were so few others who could do what he did. The shame of it burned into him, and for an instant he wished from his soul he could take the confession back. But Frigga's eyes were so kind, and so free of judgment, that it undid the last threads holding him together.

He told her something of his story, as best that he could. But he found it easier to explain than he expected; her strange insight seemed to fill in the gaps, and she listened with a compassion that eased him enough to speak. About how he'd come to be Captain America, how he'd been cast forward into a world where he knew nothing, had nothing, other than the weight of his duty. How he'd carried it for twelve years, placing aside nearly everything else of value in his life.

"I've tried to do the right thing," he said at last. "It's just that I don't know how much I have left. But… when so many people rely on me…"

He trailed off, but Frigga seemed to understand. "It's hard," she murmured. "To belong to the world."

To hear her put it into words, words he could never seem to find— his breath caught for a moment as his chest suddenly went tight. He set his jaw against a fresh jag of tears.

"I'm sorry," he hissed. "This isn't your burden."

"It's all right, you know— to ask for a few moments of mercy." Gently she took his gloved hands. "We must share in the burdens of others sometimes. I think you know this better than most."

He knew. God, how he knew. He thought again of Natasha, of Tony, of everyone he'd fought and sacrificed beside over his years fighting the battles no one else could. If they couldn't… live, escape, find peace among those burdens… what right did he have to try?

He drew in a shallow, hitching breath. "Wouldn't it be wrong to just walk away?"

She shook her head, curls swaying softly. "I could not say what's right and what's wrong for you, young man. Your path is your own. I know my son too feared that he'd let everyone down— that it had made him unworthy. But just because we suffer doesn't mean we've failed."

Steve's eyes dropped, finding he could no longer meet her gaze. "What does it mean, then?"

"That we need something. And it's human to _need._"

He was silent for a long moment. "I came to return the Aether," he said at last. "But I'm not sure how." He lifted his gaze to hers again. "Could you help me?"

"Would you trust me with it?" she asked, extending her hand. "I will see that it's restored."

Relief flooded through him, and he gave a solemn nod. With trembling hands, he produced the stone from the case and offered it to her. With a flick of her wrist, Frigga conjured a burst of green energy, not unlike that wielded by Loki, that wrapped itself around the stone and swallowed it.

"I should be on my way now." Steve gripped Mjolnir's handle, suddenly remembering it. "I borrowed this too, for a while. But I think belongs here." He paused. "Where—?"

"Don't worry." She gestured for him to put it aside. "Thor will find it, when he needs it. Just as you did."

He wavered uncertainly a moment, then set the hammer on the floor beside her. It had served him well, for the brief time it had been his to wield. He looked back to Frigga— to the moments of mercy in her eyes. Steve could only imagine what that had meant to Thor. What would he ask his own mother, if he'd had the chance?

He seized her hands again, in sudden desperate gratitude. She took and held them tightly in her own.

"Thank you," she told him. "For being there for my son."

"Thank you," he answered. "For…"

He found he didn't have the words. But that was all right. Instead, Steve pressed her hands in his own and bowed his head. He remained there a long moment, gathering himself. Then he stepped back, nodding in farewell to Frigga, and set his watch for the jump.


	6. Mind

For the first time in this journey, Steve left Asgard a little lighter than he'd come. His talk with Queen Frigga had hollowed him out, but in its wake he felt purged, in a way renewed. So much so that he felt strong enough to go back to 2012 New York. It had been a dark time for him, and now it was haunted by with the ghost of people he'd lost.

He appeared at Stark Tower, not in uniform this time but the sort of street clothes he used to wear back then. He had to be sure to stay inconspicuous, especially with his own double around. They'd liked to tease him for dressing like an old man, but honestly this was the way he felt most comfortable— not too sloppy, not too showy, something like a regular guy. He was as low-key as he could be, a super soldier in slacks and flannel, carrying a scepter that could control minds.

He'd put the stone back in to return it in the form in which he'd taken it, though he'd been at a loss initially as to where. His "hail Hydra" trick to snick it off them in the first place— not too shabby, if he said so himself —did not lend itself to seeing it back into the custody of SHIELD. He doubted he'd be able to pull the same trick he used on Peter Quill on his 2012 self, but perhaps that wasn't necessary. He recalled how the 2012 version of himself, upon seeing him, had assumed he was Loki shape-shifted into his form to steal the scepter back. That Steve might not be so easy with his opponent mysteriously disappearing, leaving behind the prize over which they'd fought. But at least he could be counted on to return it to SHIELD, where the timeline needed it to be, since at that time he'd had no reason to suspect anything.

Steve had been warned, of course, of what it might be like if he encountered his younger self. But there were no words that could have prepared him to go a round of hand-to-hand combat with his own person. Project Rebirth had set out to make a super soldier, and to be on the receiving end of that engineering miracle was no joke. He hit like a freight train, moved like a man half his size. But the Steve of 2024 had still been able to prevail over his earlier iteration. Yes, he was a dozen years older, but he didn't seem to age like normal people did, and he remembered how exhausted he'd been after the battle of New York. It was close as he'd expected, but he had learned a thing or two in the years since then. After all, he'd know better than anyone how to hit the weak points of Captain America.

Steve had returned to that moment, to leave the scepter with his own unconscious body. As he curled the gloved fingers around the staff, he couldn't help but take a moment to look himself over again. A guy didn't often have the chance to see himself from the outside. He'd never liked that version of the suit, truth be told, neither in look nor in feel. But even that cheesy costume couldn't obscure just how impressive a figure that super soldier body cut, from the massive arms to the broad shoulders to the expanse of back— all the way down, he thought with a blush, to America's ass.

He remembered the strange disconnect he'd experienced shortly after his transformation, at least when he'd had a moment to breathe and take a look at himself in the mirror. Who was that blond Adonis staring back at him, all perfect proportions and rippling muscle and features carved as if from marble? Steve Rogers was that scrawny kid who got out of breath climbing the stairs to his own apartment building. Even firm, real flesh beneath his hands could hardly convince him. That man— that god —couldn't possibly be him.

There had been so much for him to do then that he'd hardly been able to dwell on it. Thank goodness for for the army-issue uniforms, or he would have never figured out how to dress himself. And there was still that way some people looked at him, like they weren't really seeing _him_. A part of him had not and would never really believe that this body was his, even after living it for a decade and a half. But now, standing over that body, seeing himself as others saw him— beautiful, powerful, _perfect_ —even he had to admit he was something. He suddenly remember those shirts SHIELD used to have for him, so tight it was almost indecent, and he had to laugh.

When Steve had first enlisted, he had never meant for this to become his life. He'd meant only to do his part, even after his transformation, even after he discovered just what he was capable of as a soldier. His only intention had always been to protect and serve his country as best he could. When that service had called upon him to make what he thought was the ultimate sacrifice, he did not hesitate. It was only that he was so adrift, so at a loss to wake up seventy years in the future that he threw himself into the only thing he had left.

It was here, in 2012, that Steve had made the decision, in the wake of the battle of New York, when he saw the full magnitude of what the world had stood to lose. This would be his purpose now, not just for the space of a war but for the rest of his life, to fight the battles, to take on the burdens— to give himself to the world. They needed him, and so he would have to go on.

That resolution had sustained him, given him the strength to find some way to live in this new world. And it was good for him to figure out how to move forward. He'd made friends, found satisfaction in service, learned again how to hope. But it had fundamentally reshaped the way he'd seen himself. He had to go on, not because he was Steven Grant Rogers from Brooklyn, Joseph and Sarah's boy who liked to draw— but because he was Captain America.

"Is that really all you're good for?" Bucky had asked him gently. "Throwing yourself on grenades?" And Steve knew that the version of himself he was looking at now believed that, had resigned himself to that as his purpose going forward.

But then, to hear it said in such stark terms gave him pause. He tried, if not to argue, then to explain. "It's not— it's not about me. It's about… what has to be done—"

"You gave your life once already. And you still didn't quit. When is it enough?"

Steve stared at him, almost pleading. "I— I don't know," he confessed. "I don't know if it will ever be enough." And he didn't, not for anything. Not to save to the world, not to do the right thing, not even to look himself in the mirror and believe he'd done all right.

Bucky's eyes narrowed. "So… what?" An edge of anger surged into his voice. "You've got to— just burn yourself out, or else you're letting everybody down? Pour out every last drop, because that's the only way you'll be good enough?"

Steve gritted his teeth. "Bucky—"

His friend moved in close. "What do you have to do, Steve? How much do you have to give up and suffer through, before you get to be good enough?"

He made no answer. He didn't know how.

Standing over his 2012 self, suddenly he recalled what he'd been told by Abraham Erskine for what he hoped for him, the night before the procedure that would change his path forever. "Not a perfect soldier. But a good man."

Steve decided then that he had another stop to make, before he proceeded to his next checkpoint.

Using his old access codes, he made his way for the elevators, to ascend to the personal floors of Stark Tower. They told him about the screwing they'd done with 2012 Tony's arc reactor, so he'd figured the man would be laid up, and his own 2012 self would be dealing with the scepter. He'd have a certain window of time to speak with his old friend.

Their relationship had never been a simple one. Like Natasha, he'd had an initial distrust, even dislike, for the man when first he'd met him. Billionaire playboy Tony Stark was everything he'd learned to hate as a skinny city kid in Brooklyn. He was rich, spoiled, arrogant, all the worst things Steve had seen in his father Howard. It was enough that when Tony had come after him, chest thrown out at in that egotistical way of his, Steve told him exactly what he'd thought of him. "You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you."

But Tony had proved him wrong that day they fought the Chitauri, guiding that missile into the void, and had gone on proving him wrong time and again after. As the two of them fought side by side, he saw not only Tony's courage but his loyalty and vulnerability, on top of the bravado and intellect that made him famous. He had grown and changed as the challenges came, going from playboy to hero to husband and father. Steve frankly envied him that, finding meaning in building his family in the wake of so much devastation. And when he'd given his life to activate the Infinity Stones to defeat Thanos and save the world, it was the culmination of a journey a lifetime in the making. There was more to that man than Steve would ever would have thought possible.

He was sorry it had taken him so long to really understand Tony. Steve hadn't immediately seen how hard it was for him to deal with Captain America, who had been his distant father's friend. Steve and Howard had seen one another as contemporaries, but with the vagaries of his unfreezing, Tony saw a man almost young enough to be his own son. From what Steve gathered, over the years Tony had listened to his father give the praise and approval to Steve's memory that Tony had never managed to get from him. It didn't take a great leap of logic to guess that just as Tony jangled at everything that made Steve uncertain of himself, he himself did the same thing for Tony.

Even at their best, they'd never been exactly close. Tony had spent years struggling with the after effects of the battle, no small burden for his already restless, addictive personality. Then had come their division over the Sokovia Accords, a powder keg ignited by the reappearance of Bucky when he was still the Winter Soldier, and the man who had, however unwittingly, killed Howard and Maria Stark. Back then, there had been no question in Steve's mind, that he would stick by Bucky in his hour of need, the person who had always stuck by him. Even if it was at the expense of his relationship with Tony.

"He's my friend," Steve told him, as they'd squared off to fight.

"So was I," he'd answered, and Steve hadn't known until that moment just how hurt Tony had been by his decision.

He was fairly certain that Tony had never quite forgiven him for that. In a way they managed to move past it, when the extremity of the situation made everything else fall away. But Steve had hoped that when he'd reached out in that phone message, it would be enough— enough connection, enough apology —to someday make Tony reach out in kind.

"You know, he kept that message for the rest of his life," Pepper told him, when he'd gone to her to pay his respects. "He listened to it all the time."

Steve looked away. "I'm sorry I couldn't have done more. I'm sorry I couldn't fix things."

She sighed and shook her head. "You made him doubt himself. He never dealt well with that. But it wouldn't have mattered so much to him if _you_ hadn't mattered so much."

Steve found him in his rumpus room, one of those pointless daytime talk shows blaring away on the television. Tony himself was sprawled on a sofa, a pillow over his face, the old arc reactor glowing through his shirt.

Steve leaned in the doorway. "How you feeling?"

Tony rolled his head out from under the pillow to look at him. "Oh, terrific. Bring me a whiskey straight and a hooker."

Steve dropped his head, trying not to roll his eyes. "Fresh out. Got to settle for me."

"Well, that's disappointing. You could have at least grabbed me some of that shawarma." It seemed as if that little jaunt had been postponed, thanks to the time heist's meddling. "Come to nag me some more?"

Steve moved farther into the room. "I wanted to apologize."

Tony snorted. "Oh, yeah? What for, those old man pants?"

Steve had to smile. "For what I said. That you didn't have it in you to put yourself on the line. But you won it for us— even when it looked like you wouldn't be coming back."

Steve remembered Tony in the makeshift Infinity Gauntlet, staring down Thanos and the full weight of what it meant to use it.

"I thought I had you pegged," Steve told him. "I thought wrong."

He took a deep breath. Tony was watching him intently, and he thought very carefully what he was going to say next. He thought of little Morgan, the daughter who stood for everything Tony had grown to become. She faced a future without a father now, because her father had to ensure that she and the rest of the world would have any future at all.

"I know you like to think of yourself as that… billionaire playboy philanthropist character. But that's not who you are."

Tony stared at him, brows raised. "Oh, yeah? Then who am I?"

Steve extended his hand. "You're a good man."

Steve didn't know if he'd ever said it to him before. But he was grateful for the chance to say it now.

Tony looked surprised for a moment, then finally took his hand. He smirked. "Victory has made you maudlin." But there was something in his tone that suggested he was touched, at least a little, by Steve's words. He raised two fingers and tossed off a little salute. "Thank you, Captain. Very rousing to the troops. Is that all?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Steve stood to go. "Goodbye, Tony."

One last thought occurred to him, and he paused on his way.

"That sort of thing… it changes a guy. Take it from someone who knows." He swallowed, trying to keep his voice even. "If you ever want to talk about it… you know where to find me."

Tony grinned crookedly. "Yeah. I'll be sure to do that. You bet."

Steve turned again, leaving for good this time. He doubted Tony would take him up on it. But perhaps there was a chance to save him trying to shoulder it alone.

Tony's voice came suddenly from behind him. "Next time I see you, you better at least bring ice cream. I nearly died, for Christ's sake."

Steve grinned, in that way he did when he was sad, and readied his GPS watch. There was just one more stone he needed to attend to.


	7. Time

The time stone was all that remained. Technically this one came before his collection of the mind stone, since it happened before the battle was over. But there was a reason Steve was saving this one for last.

Time. Time confounded him, stretching sometimes and skipping others, the way seventy years had passed without a trace and how in fifteen years he'd hardly aged a day. Wrangling the vagaries of time was the mission he'd been tasked with.

He was so close. So close to having completed his charge and clipped all the branches. It was important to preserving their victory, to ensuring that they didn't damage the past in attempting to save their future. Just one more stop, and then he could—

What? What was there after this? There had always just waiting for the next crisis, or at best the calm before the next storm. There was never really an end for him, who had given himself over to always being the man that stepped up. Because he didn't know who he was, what he was good for, without it.

"What do you have to do, Steve?" Bucky had asked him. "How much do you have to give up and suffer through, before you get to be good enough?"

The question stopped him dead in his tracks. How could he ever know, when there would always be more battles to fight? When the world would never stop needing, no matter how much he did?

"Somebody's got to do it," was all he could manage.

"So why's it always gotta be you?" Bucky shook his head. "Who died and made you Jesus?"

Steve had to laugh despite himself. That was the trouble, he supposed, of taking so much upon your own shoulders— you made yourself awfully important.

Bucky moved in close, laid a hand upon his shoulder. "Don't get me wrong, there's only one you, Steve. I've got no doubt about that. But… you're not the only superhero in the world anymore. Let somebody else carry the shield for a while."

Steve snorted; they'd gathered the broken pieces of vibranium from the battlefield where Thanos had left them. "There isn't even a shield to carry anymore."

"Great. Even easier."

Steve grinned crookedly and spread his hands. "Oh, yeah? You want to do this?"

Bucky barked a laugh. "Be Captain America? Not a chance in hell— I've seen what it's done to you. But… you've got good people now. Don't you have faith in them?"

Steve dipped his head, suddenly chastened. It was not fair to discount the enormous courage, integrity, and valor of the people he'd fought beside. They weren't only teammates or colleagues or even heroes; they had become his friends. After everything he'd given up to carry on as Captain America in the Twenty-First Century, they were the one thing he'd gained— their friendship, that family. The people without whom he never would have survived to keep picking himself back up.

Bucky's eyes regarded him so solemnly. "And we want you to be happy, Steve."

Steve looked at his best friend then, the one for whom he had fought and sacrificed, the one connection to his old life he'd managed to keep. "And what about you, Buck?"

He shook his head. "There's no undoing what's been done to me. I have a chance now, maybe, to… get past it. Move forward, someday. And that's all thanks to you. But the rest is up to me now; there's nothing more you can do. For you, though… maybe you can do something."

"Do you really think…" Steve swallowed hard; when he tried to speak again, his throat felt as if it had closed up. "Do you really think I could go back?"

Bucky leaned in close. "As long as I've known you, you've only ever wanted three things. You've taken care of me. And you've been doing right by the world for as long as I can remember. All that leaves… is her."

One last stop. It was the rooftop of the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Sorcerer Supreme, where Bruce had made his bargain to borrow the time stone on the condition it would be returned. Steve's last job was to hold up their end with the Ancient One, who was waiting for them to close the loop.

Steve wished he'd had the chance to ask Stephen Strange about her, but all he had to go on was Bruce's encounter. He'd told Steve about how she had been the one to teach him about the consequences to the timeline if they did not return the Infinity Stones to the points from which they'd been borrowed. Indeed, her knowledge of the workings of time was extraordinary; she even seemed to know of Strange's eventual coming, several years before any sign. All of this Bruce had learned once she'd knocked his soul straight out of his Hulk body, only to return it once she was done.

"She's got serious power," Bruce said. "I've never seen anything like it."

She was of course still on the rooftop on Bleecker Street, where his friend had last seen her, doing her part in the battle of New York. Though Steve had never laid eyes on her himself, her presence was unmistakeable. She was a tall, lean figure with sharp features and a smooth bald head, swathed in a brilliant yellow sorcerer's robe. Around her neck she wore the same eye-shaped amulet that Strange did, an heirloom passed down to him from her. As Steve appeared on the sanctuary rooftop, she was conjuring circular grids of golden magic from her hands, blasting the alien warriors and shielding the surrounding buildings from their attacks.

"Excuse me," he called, causing her to turn. "I think I have something that belongs to you."

She looked him up and down in a way that, like Queen Frigga, made him feel as if she saw right through him. She tossed out a burst of power over her shoulder, nailing a Chitauri flyer without even a glance, and smiled.

He approached. "Forgive me. I don't mean to interrupt."

"Not at all, Captain Rogers. I've been expecting you." She chuckled. "Well, not precisely you, but… Dr. Banner promised me someone would come." She tilted her head curiously. "I take it your gambit worked? You succeeded?"

"Yes," he answered solemnly. "Though not without cost."

She nodded. "Of course. There's always a cost."

Steve knelt to open the case. She tensed her fingers and swept them past each other in front of her chest, making her amulet open and glow. The time stone rose from the case and floated toward her, winking with green light until the amulet closed around it, sealing it back inside.

There it was. That was it, the sixth and final stone returned to its proper place. His mission was complete.

He dropped his gaze from the amulet to stare down into the empty case. He should have felt relieved, like his burden was lifted. But all it meant was there were no more distractions, nothing else to pursue. All that remained was his own struggle, the one he'd been wrestling with since his last conversation with Bucky.

After a moment he shut the case and rose. The Ancient One nodded to him, satisfied. "Thank you, Captain."

But he made no move, only stood there, case in hand. She raised her chin slightly, regarding him. "Is there something else?"

He was silent for a beat. "You've done this for a long time," he said at last. "Haven't you?"

She smiled, as if he couldn't know how true that was. "I have."

"Could I ask you something?"

She nodded, expression curious.

He swallowed. "How does it work? When you go back and time, and take action that changes things. How does that work?"

"For most such actions, it doesn't." Her fingers flicked in an arcane gesture, and the golden threads of her magic coalesced into a flowing continuum. "The timestream is not fragile— the free will inherent in the choices of all living beings is not easily subverted. But in the absence of cosmic forces like the Infinity Stones, most of our deeds will not change the course of the whole world."

Steve watched as she sent ripples through the river of light, that pulled the stream this way and that before settling in along on its forward course.

"And what if something else changes?" he asked. "Something smaller scale than an Infinity Stone, but that still managed to have consequences on the world."

She folded her hands into the sleeves of her robe. "Did you have something particular in mind, Captain?"

Steve drew in a deep breath. "Bruce said you could… see things through time. Do you know where I came from? Not just now, but before?"

"You mean, the ice in the Arctic of 2011?" she asked. "Where you crashed down in an airship in 1945?"

He nodded, and bit his lip. He cast about for some way to say it, to ask without asking her the question that had been twisting in him. It seemed so wrong, so impossible a wish. But he had crossed the universe, tangled with the timestream, lived as something more than normal man, and now he was staring down a mistress of power inconceivable. The impossible was all that was left to him. In that moment, all pretense fell away, and he told her what he was carrying in his heart.

"There was a woman then," he said softly, gaze downcast. "Before I went into the ice. We were— we had something. But then came that mission, and I thought I would die… but I didn't. I woke up, seventy years into the future. And then everything I had was gone."

He sighed again, to steel himself. "I thought I could… move forward. That our time, our chance, was past. But I could never get her out of my head. And now… that time doesn't seem so fixed anymore."

He looked up to meet the Ancient One's eyes. She regarded him in new understanding. "You want to go back."

"I want to," he breathed, and the enormity of speaking it, confessing it aloud for the first time, almost crushed him to the floor. "I don't think I can go on much longer with the life I've been living. And once I had hoped once to have a life with her. It occurred to me that, now… maybe we have that chance after all."

The Ancient One listened to his story intently. "I see."

Her gaze on him was piercing; he had to pace away. "But… she already had a life. Children, with another man. I carried her in a box at her funeral. She picked up and moved on, did and accomplished so much that had nothing to do with me."

Finally he stopped, nervous energy exhausted, and raked a hand through his hair. "I can't just… erase all that. I can't erase _them._"

He tuned back to the Ancient One, eyes pleading. "Is there any other way? Do I have any hope?"

She was silent a long moment, looking at him very seriously. "Will you come with me?"

He nodded. Brilliance exploded from her fingertips, and the whole world around them changed.

His sight was dazzled at first, such that he could not see what was happening. But when at last it cleared, Steve let out a soundless gasp. She had transported him somewhere, to a realm of brilliant threads of color and texture indescribable, weaving in and out of each other through the darkness. They twisted and surged through the darkness, knitting themselves into a pattern of complexity beyond his comprehension.

For what felt like an age, Steve could only gape. He felt adrift in the sea of it, as if it would swallow him completely. He tried to ground himself in his body, but there was no gravity, no sense of up or down. In his wonder he caught sight of his spreading hands, and was surprised they were not the large masculine paws of his super soldier body, but the fine-boned, knobby-knuckled fingers he'd grown up with. Steve suddenly remembered Bruce telling him how the Ancient One had smacked his soul in human form out of his body; she had summoned Steve's true inner self too, in the shape of his skinny, asthmatic body he was born with.

_"What is this?"_ he asked, somehow speaking without sound or words. Just the same, he heard without hearing the voice of Ancient One, who appeared beside him amid the churning threads. Her presence seemed huge to him now, especially at his frail, pre-serum stature.

_"This is the timestream,"_ she said. _"The great tapestry woven of all the strands that make up the universe. Every agent, every actor, every force that drives our path, pulling and knotting with one another in the sum of all possibility. No one strand can change the course of all others, but all paths are the sum of all the strands they link with."_

She sliced with her hands, and their perspective abruptly changed. Steve had difficulty focusing among the chaos, but the glow of the Ancient One's magic pulled his eye; amid the tangles he saw a— a _shifting_ of some sort, where one thread was pulled and tugged on by another, as if it would break before turning on its way.

_"The course of history runs strong. But when there are forces at play that can alter the path that time has taken, a new possibility unfurls beside it. Not a change or erasure of reality— but a new reality, split off with all the consequences of that choice." _

He watched the strand, not break, but rather divide, pulling away a new strand, a forking like Frost's two paths through the yellow wood.

He gasped without his body breathing. Suddenly he recalled a term he thought he'd learned from Bruce. _"A… a multiverse."_

Possibility. Alternative. If he went back… he wouldn't erase Peggy's life here— just start another, different life. He could start himself another, different life. One he only just let himself dare to dream of.

Abrupt uncertainty gripped him then, and he turned back to the Ancient One. _"Can you see what would happen? If I… started that branch?"_

She shook her bald head. _"In my work I have learned to read some things from the threads of time. But no mortal can comprehend enough to predict all possible futures."_

_"That makes sense,"_ he conceded. _"It's only… how could I ever justify it? When I can't know what might come of it?"_

His vision filled with light again, and the vast crisscrossing map of time around them began to fade. He could hear the Ancient One laughing, making the very universe around them seem to shake. _"But that's just it, Captain Rogers,"_ she chided. _"No one can_ ever__really know what will come."__

Steve thought of every desperate moment, every tight spot, every instance he'd been called upon to be a leader through an uncertain time. How he'd had to make decisions as best he could, to do the most he could, when there was nothing to guide him but his own moral compass, his own brain and gut and heart.

His eyes cleared, and he was once again on the rooftop on Bleecker Street, once again huge and towering in his super soldier body. He looked down to meet the eyes of the Ancient One, who was smiling at him in that knowing way.

"That is the risk you take," she said. "When you love."

Steve closed the fingers of the hand upon which he wore his GPS watch. Without words, he inclined his head, and she bowed her own in return.

Breathing deep to strengthen himself, Steve set his watch for one last jump.


	8. Infinity

He still hadn't made up his mind when Bucky came to say goodbye, just before he finally departed. The idea was twisting unresolved in him, but his friend seemed to have some quiet assurance in his bearing when they spoke. "I'm going to miss you."

"Don't do anything stupid until I get back," Steve told him, as Bucky had to him so many times before.

"How could I?" Bucky gave him a ghost of the grin he'd had all those years ago. "You're taking all the stupid with you."

All their lives, Bucky had been looking out for him. Pulling him out of scrapes when he'd been a scrawny kid, too stubborn to know what was good for him. Watching his back through mission after mission in the Second World War. Fighting through a fog of brainwashing and programming to remember who he was. When he'd had nothing, he'd had Bucky, the friend who wanted nothing more for him than to find some way to be happy.

He had the stones safely packed away in a case in one hand, Mjolnir gripped in the other. Thanks to the Pym-Van Dynes' shrink technology, he was equipped with everything he could possibly need— supplies, disguises, tools. And into one pocket of his belt, he made sure to slip his compass, Peggy's photo tucked inside, the one thing that had come with him for every step of his journey.

If Bucky believed it could be all right… maybe it could be. Bucky was with him until the end of the line.

"How long is this going to take?" Sam had asked, just before he'd left.

"For us, just a few minutes," Bruce answered. "But he has as long as he needs."

He was in no hurry. He'd been undecided when he'd left, but now that he'd settled to it, he found he was nervous. For something as important as this, he wasn't going to rush.

Just as his last jump, his next one would keep him in New York. Only this time, he'd be going significantly further back than half a day or so before. He stayed in his street clothes, the blue flannel button-up with the sleeves rolled, the gray trousers with the high waist. They, at least, wouldn't pose a problem to blending in; Natasha had commented once that his preferred mode of dress wouldn't stand out anywhere going back to at least 1935. He pulled on a faded blue Dodgers cap to go with it, an old one, with the Brooklyn logo. Many changes the future had brought into the world had been for the better, but it had killed him to learn that his team moved.

He took a couple of hours to just walk around the city, reminding himself, taking in all the details of the life he'd left behind. The city was at once very different and yet surprisingly the same, full of people, full of landmarks that would stand there for a century or more. It had a very different feel, of course; the traffic was lighter, and people seemed to move slower, pausing to chat and exchange visits with their neighbors. Steve wandered through the city center, through the markets, the neighborhoods, the park. He was taller than most of the people he encountered, but no one paid him any mind, with his hands in his pockets and his cap pulled low over his eyes. At one point he drew near two men hurling ethnic slurs at one another about to break into a fistfight, but just as Steve was weighing whether or not to step in, friends on either side appeared to pull them apart. A few blocks down from them, a bunch of kids speaking a mix of Spanish and English had a stickball game going in the empty lot at the end of the alley.

He marveled at how it was at once so very strange and so completely ordinary. In some ways, it was like putting on an old sweater again, well-worn but lost for a time at the bottom of a dresser drawer. In others, it drove home just how much he'd had to adapt to his life in the Twenty-First Century. And yet somehow, as he paused a moment to watch that stickball game, black and white and Latin kids batting around that stained rubber Spaldeen, it seemed as if some things never changed in New York.

As he meandered, he thought about what he was here for. In truth, he wasn't quite sure how to make his approach. He had reason to believe he'd be welcome here, but— what if, somehow, he was not? There was so much explaining to do, not just his own story but a whole course of history. Would he be able to make any sense of it, and would she even believe it if he told her?

He tried to appear, as best he could, as the man she remembered; he knew he didn't look much different, but his experiences had weathered him a little if not his age. And where would he do it? Where could he go to her where he could be certain to find no one but her? He knew where she was working at this time— an office hidden behind the front of the telephone company —but that place would be crawling with agents, maybe even Hydra operatives buried in the guts of what she would one day turn into SHIELD. He didn't want anyone to know he was back; certainly not before she did. She was living in a boarding house these days, a place over on 37th with two dozen other young working women. But he could hardly come ring up her door; he knew respectable places like that would not allow men to visit them at home. So, not certain what else to do, he decided to bypass the front desk, and hope she would forgive him for inviting himself to wait inside.

It was a surprisingly easy proposition, breaking into an apartment building in broad daylight. He got her room number off the call button list in the front, then with minimal difficulty climbed the outside to her floor. A few tools in his kit were enough to jimmy the window latch, and he found himself in a tiny, homey kitchen of a kind he hadn't seen since before he enlisted.

He would not poke or pry, he resolved. Bad enough that he'd had to let himself into her place; he wasn't going to go digging around any further. But even just the details of the kitchen— the tiny white flowers in a chipped mug on the sill, the lovingly kept china teapot in a place of honor on the counter —made him long to comb through the whole flat, just to see what other signs of her he'd find. Maybe even that picture she'd eventually come to have on her desk at SHIELD, the one of him the way he'd looked when they met.

He regarded the time device clasped on his wrist. Then, after a moment's consideration, he took it off and put it in his pocket.

He waited quietly for a few hours, wondering, worrying, trying to plan what he might say. Just long enough for all manner of fears, doubts, and what-ifs to climb the walls of his brain. But then he heard the sound of a key turning in a look and he stood, guts leaping. And all those swirling thoughts were swept away by the sight of Agent Peggy Carter, the Peggy Carter of his memory, the one he'd carried in his heart since he'd crashed into the ice.

She saw him there as she walked in and stopped short. He came forward and doffed his cap, the way a gentleman ought to. For a long moment he took her in, in all the glory of youth and beauty, from her perfectly rolled hair, to her signature lipstick, to her smart suit, to the silhouette of her burned forever into his brain.

"Hello, Peggy."

Heartbeats went by as she gaped at him, all the light in the room drunk in by her enormous brown eyes. Steve's breath caught in his throat.

Then she sank to the floor and her leg shot out, sweeping like a whip to kick his own legs out from under him. Before he knew it, he was flat on his back, one arm thrown over his head and handcuffed to the radiator.

Staring up at the ceiling, he reflected that nothing about this was really surprising. Of course Peggy was on her guard, and able to handle herself in an uncertain situation. He could have laughed, if all the wind had not been knocked out of him.

She rose to stand over him, and he turned his head to look. She stared down at him past the barrel of her drawn gun, clutched in a two-handed grip leveled right between his eyes.

"Who are you?" she demanded. God, he'd missed the little things about her. Even now, he couldn't help but thrill to hear the crisp cadence of her accent again, watch the catlike speed and grace with which she moved.

He heaved a little to catch his breath. "Peggy. It's me. It's Steve."

If anything, her fierce expression grew angrier. "Don't you dare."

"Steven Grant Rogers," he tried again. "My parents were Sarah and Joseph Rogers from Brooklyn—"

She cut him off ruthlessly. "I don't know how you're doing this, but it won't work. Captain Rogers gave his life in the service of his country, and _damned_ if I'll stand by while anyone tries to steal his name—" Her lip twisted, in a mix of confusion and hurt. "_Or_ his face."

"It is me," he said again. "I can prove it." He rolled over and twisted into a crouch. She stepped back warily, putting distance between them, but the gun still stayed trained. He probably could have broken the radiator, but he just leaned against the limit of the cuff. "You're Margaret Elizabeth Carter, born in Hempstead in 1921. You started to train as a nurse, but you joined Bletchley Park as a code breaker to help with the war effort. Then you joined the Special Operations Executive in honor of your brother Michael. That lead you to MI5 and the Strategic Scientific Reserve… where you and I first met."

She didn't waiver. "There's nothing in that that couldn't have come from a file. You'll have to do better than research."

Steve swallowed hard. "Fair." He raised his free hand, to show his intention, then slowly reached into his trouser pocket. With great care, he drew out his compass, flipped it open, and tossed it gently on the ground between them. Peggy's eyes darted down, and came to rest on her own picture in miniature staring back at her. He watched the gun lower, ever so slightly.

"You gave me that picture," he whispered. "It was in the south of Poland. We were taking apart a gun emplacement with the Commandos. You caught me drawing you one evening, after we'd fallen back to camp. You had your hair in twists on either side, gathered together low on your neck, and while you were cleaning your gun, Falsworth was trying to sweet-talk you into sewing a button for him. You were telling him where he could stick that needle when you looked over at me, sketching away, with the tip of my tongue poking out of my mouth."

Peggy's eyes had lifted from the compass to fix on him as he spoke. Steve met them, and did not look away for a moment.

"You asked to see my sketchbook. I was embarrassed to show you— and not just because I was still relearning how to draw with these paws. Because I'd drawn you dozen of times, whenever I could steal a chance. Only I couldn't always finish, because there would be things to do, or I didn't want to give myself away. I was worried you'd think I was a creep, watching and staring so much. We weren't… anything then, not really. We had a job to do, and it wouldn't have been proper for the service. Still, I always watched you, every chance I got, ever since that ride to Camp Lehigh."

Steve's voice had grown louder now, stronger and more steady.

"You looked through the pictures I'd done of you. Plotting on a map. Writing reports. Mending your gear. Always doing something, you commented. I said, _well… that's you._ That's who you are. But men didn't always notice that about you.

"When you handed it back to me, I thought I'd dodged a bullet. Until a few days later, when I was bunking down for the night, I found that picture tucked into my bedroll, with a note— _so you can finally finish a sketch._"

A tremor, ever so slight, ran through her hands and into her weapon.

"I did finish that sketch. And others— always busy, always doing something. And I kept that picture with me, from that night on— you don't know how long I've kept it with me. Because after everywhere I've been, everything I've been through, it's never been clearer to me— what I want, what I've always wanted, is to be with you."

She was stock-still for an instant, then another. His heart hung in his mouth. Finally a little breath escaped her red lips. Her expression broke as her eyes filled up with tears.

"You're late," she murmured, as her hands trembled and the gun dropped low. "We had a date planned."

He leaped to stand, pulling against the restraint. "I wouldn't leave my best girl," he breathed. "Not when she owes me a dance."

The gun slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. Steve seized hold of the cuff with his other hand and twisted until it broke. When he was free she ran to him and he threw his arms wide. He swept her in close, swinging her around, enfolding her, the full warm reality of her pressed in tight against him.

"Steve," she sobbed, face buried against his shoulder. "Oh, Steve."

That was it. In that moment, all the weight of years, of struggle, of sacrifice, seemed to fall away. There would be time later for explanations, practicalities, plans. At last, he had as long as he needed, a lifetime of her in his arms.

He was home.


	9. Author's Note

There you have it! I hope you enjoyed this work. I wanted to take what the film established and expand on it in a way that felt true and meaningful.

I really loved the ending the film set up for Steve. I firmly believe that characters need to be challenged in the ways that they're weak and prompted to grow and change in order to create engaging narrative. So the idea that he could be challenged to take care of himself for once— something he's never really been good at —is a much greater journey and bigger lesson for Steve to learn than him throwing himself on yet more grenades. Because he was literally doing that since the minute we met him. More of that would not have represented any growth.

It actually kind of infuriated me that some people thought that was "out of character," or that he was "too good a man" to decide he couldn't always be killing himself to save the world anymore. Did people really believe he's a worse person for wanting literally any life for himself? I want to say to those people, imagine you had a friend who had done even _one_ amazing, heroic, selfless, demanding thing, much less as many as Steve had. If that friend told you he was tired and wanted to focus on doing something for himself for once— would you tell that friend he was "too good a man" to do that? Would you actually believe that made him less of a good person if he's no longer destroying himself to take care of everybody else?

If so, I don't want to be your friend.

But it had to be a struggle— making the choice to go a different way needed to be hard for Steve, in order to prompt a proper narrative journey. So I decided to take the tactic that he knew he was burning out and wanted something different, but that HE was afraid that it was cowardly or selfish. So he'd have to work out his feelings about that in order to come to his decision. The mechanism I used for this was his conversation with Bucky before he left, as well as the encounters he has in the process of returning the Infinity Stones.

The directors have said that he and Bucky talked about the idea of Steve returning to the 1940's. You can tell by the way Bucky tells him "I'm going to miss you," as they say goodbye— if he was expected to come right back, Bucky wouldn't have indicated missing him. But I chose to go with the idea that while they had discussed it, Steve was still undecided. This meant that he could have a journey in coming to the decision, while still honoring the idea that he'd done it with input from Bucky. That totally makes sense to me, as he'd talk it over with his best friend. And honestly, I believe Bucky cares enough about him to encourage him to do what was good for himself for once, since he'd never made that a priority in his life. But Steve's problem is that while he wants to go, he doesn't know if it's okay for him to do it.

My writing partner and I worked out the rough structure of it extremely quickly, the night after we'd both seen the film. The order of the return of each stone, who he'd encounter there, roughly what Steve would do during and take away from each encounter. The biggest challenge was to make a believable arc for Steve's very internal journey. I elected to make all of his stone returns fairly uneventful, for two reasons— one, I didn't want to take the time hammering out complicated capers, and two, because I wanted Steve's inner struggle to be the main narrative through line. So that meant I had to plot out how he'd develop in his emotions and viewpoint, how he'd get from one stage of emotional development to the next, and where. That's tricky, but that's what it takes when you want the plot to basically BE the character journey.

So I decided that everything he did and encountered would have to push him a little farther toward deciding. He'd be turning it over in his mind, and new perspective would be injected by whatever he encountered returning the stones. It would cause him to consider something, and call up to memory a relevant piece of his conversation with Bucky, and he'd evolve a little in his position, implicitly or explicitly.

I very consciously decided that Bucky would be the only force actively encouraging him to put his own self-care first. It struck me as highly unrealistic if the universe at large seemed to be pushing towards anything, or even people who basically didn't know him and had no investment in his choices at all. So I while I definitely wanted his takeaway from his experiences to help him decide, I didn't want it to seem like anything was trying to make him decide, or actively wanted him to do anything in particular. He was presented with information— even, occasionally, kindness —and drew conclusions from it.

I wrote out Bucky's conversation with him in its entirety, to be referenced as if in flashback or memory. While each referenced piece was conceived of to support his emotional journey at that stage of the story, I worked very hard to make sure it flowed and built as a continuous, believable conversation that could stand to be read on its own. Bucky sure does get a bunch of wham lines, though, at brisk periodic intervals. ;-)

Steve starts pretty against the idea, fairly certain that he'd be taking the coward's way out, would be erasing the lives of Peggy's children, et cetera. He decides to return the space stone first so he has the chance to see her again like the last time he visited 1970; if he gets to see her, he reasons, that will be enough to hold him. But when he has to time jump away to avoid being caught by SHEILD, he's left way more bereft than he expected.

When he goes to Morag to return the power stone, I kept that one kind of light and funny, since I knew it would be that story's only chance. I really loved how he plays Peter Quill. I hate writing stories without humor, even when they're heavy, and I wanted to preserve a touch of Steve's wit. However, it does occur to him that this timeline's version of Quill would never meet Gamora. He compares the Quill in love with a Gamora who no longer knows him to a man who's loved and lost, and the Quill who will never meet Gamora to having never loved at all, and wonders which hurts less. He laughs at himself for think of Gamora as the love of Peter's life, aware that he's projecting.

Next he goes to Vormir, to the soul stone, and the Red Skull. Now, I have famously not enjoyed Scarlett Johansson's rendition of Black Widow and always found the character in her hands to be a pretty dull, blank slate. However, the text insists that she's a close and valued friend of Cap's, so I worked hard to honor that. The takeaway here is that he wonders if Natasha's determination to be the one to make the sacrifice came from her having come to believe that's all she was good for or had to offer— to paraphrase the great Captain Awkward, "to be burned on the pyre to keep the rest of them warm." He remembers Bucky challenging him if he thought that of himself, which he doesn't like the sound of. So, a little shift forward there. But he's still worried that if people like Black Widow and Tony didn't get to escape that fate, what right would he have?

As a side note, I really liked writing Red Skull. He always had a very overblown sort of diction, which was fun to reproduce. I made him call Steve "beautiful boy," and even poke at his issues a little— "And yet you had no care but to sacrifice yourself on the altar of other men's wars." And "Still so keenly seeking your oblivion?" His new state of being has given him time to figure a few things out, and also not given a fuck about saying them. He even gets a reference to one of my favorite moments in Watership Down by Richard Adams; see if you can spot it.

Next is Asgard, to return the Reality Stone. This chapter has consistently been my readers' favorite, I think because Steve gets a little squishier than usual, and fan fic readers tend to like their angst. I try to dole out unusual visible displays of distress carefully, especially in a character as stoic as Steve— Chris Evans has a great trick of making him smile when he's sad, for heaven's sake. But I wanted him to break down a little as a turning point. Frigga's slight magic insight made her able to understand a lot of what was going on with Cap without having to explain it, and she's not connected to anything in his regular life, both of which I think made things a little easier for him to actually discuss with someone.

This was the first person I wanted to be very careful about having no interest in encouraging Steve to do anything in particular. She has no investment in him making any particular choice. She does, however, speak the simple truth that it's hard to "belong to the world" the way he has, and that it's human to feel weak and tired when you are in need of something. And she is kind to him in a moment where he's clearly low, because she's an empathetic presence and grateful to him for being part of her son's support system. So I feel like she was able to give him a little support and validation that helped him feel a little less bad for how much he's suffered for basically living as public property for so long.

Next is New York 2012, to return the staff with the mind stone. I admit, I may have spent a little too much time on what Steve makes of having the chance to see himself as others see him. That "blond Adonis" reference may be a bridge too far. I am as I am, take it for all in all. But I attempted to make it represent how his transformation in many ways marked his transition from regular man to publicly-owned symbol, a life he'd accepted out of a sense of duty but one he's never planned for himself. And remembering how sad he was at this time throws into relief how heavy it's been to go on not because he's Steve, but because the everyone needs Captain America. He remembers Bucky asking him if it would make him selfish to decide he's done martyring himself for the world, how many times exactly does he think he needs to martyr himself for the world in order to be decent?

I also have him go make a last peace with Tony. I always loved how the films showed them caring a great deal about each other, but never really getting along. They are too profoundly at odds for that, so I found it very believable and human. He never really gets a resolution with him before Tony dies, so he uses that opportunity to tell him he's sorry he pegged him as someone too selfish to be a real hero, and that he's actually a good man. I really like how I put it together, because I think it's got real emotional impact without either man ever acting out of character. A lot of fan fic likes to push the characters' emotional displays and interactions up to eleven, and I just don't think it feels true.

Last stop is to return the time stone to the Ancient One in the stronghold on Bleecker Street. This one I had to do right. By this point he's pretty sure he wants to go back, maybe it's even morally acceptable for him to go back… but he's worried about the damage he'll do the the timestream if he does. Specifically, will he erase Peggy's children from existence if she never marries their dad? So he asks the Ancient One, because she's a person who would know, and she explains by astral projecting them to see what I like to refer to as "the tapestry of time."

The tapestry of time is an idea I've had in my head for many years, imagining all the forces and actors of the universe as threads that weave in and out of each other in an incomprehensibly complicated cord to create the timeline. Using the description of time travel from the film, I extrapolated what I call a "resilient timeline," where our individual actions and free will do have effect on the progress of the world, but much like any conventional individual action, it's hard to shift the course of major things— even if you travel back and time and try as an individual actor to alter them. (Personally I'm more inclined to believe in the butterfly effect, but I think this version fit with the workings of the film better.) Except, of course, if you do something significant enough to create a new branch off the preexisting line.

Then, taking inspiration from the scene where the Ancient One explains to Bruce how the missing time stone would create a branching timeline for her existence, I go with the multiverse theory. That Steve would be creating a multiverse in going back to the 1940s, which would mean that Peggy's life (and by extension her children's) in the current timeline would remain unchanged, but that he'd create an offshoot universe where her path goes a different way.

Now, I've read there's some disagreement between the directors and the scriptwriters as to whether or not that was the intention. The directors, I've heard, go with the above multiverse view. HOWEVER, the scriptwriters say their intention was that Steve was ALWAYS Peggy's husband, and her children, his children, the WHOLE TIME in the MCU. Honestly, in my gut, that second explanation appeals to me much more. Instinctively I love the idea, that Old Steve has been hanging around in the shadows, that Peggy's children are actually his AND part supersoldier, and that could factor in future stories.

But… unfortunately… I don't believe the previous writing supports that enough. There are arguments to be made, of course. It's true that there is no actual confirmation of who Peggy's husband and father of her children was. But Steve and Peggy spend time together after his reappearance in 2011; would she really have kept it hidden from him until her death? I'm not sure I believe that even with her Alzheimer's. Would her children not know, and never want to tell him the truth? Would he have stood by and allowed Bucky's torture and turning into a brainwashed assassin? Would he let Hydra infiltrate and destroy the organization Peggy worked so hard to build? I guess you could argue he was afraid to change the course of history— I've seen at least one fic argue that, which could be a reasonable explanation. (Again, in my gut I'm a butterfly effect kind of girl.) But, since they seem to be putting forth a resilient timeline… I'm not sure that really scans. So I expect that the Russo brothers' multiverse explanation is the canon answer, and it's the one I went with here.

But back to the story— the Ancient One was the second person I was concerned about not pushing Steve to take any particular action. Like Frigga, I just wanted her to present him with truth. Because of her similar powers of sight, I had her kind of get the circumstances of his situation instinctively, and maybe have some sympathy for him, though not as explicitly as Frigga's. She tells him the facts of how time works, and, when he expresses fear of taking an action he can't see the consequences of, she gently reminds him that to a certain extent we can never really know what our future holds. But that's just part of the deal, particularly when it comes to the risk of loving. And that is what settles him to do it.

The actual reunion between him and Peggy I wanted to be clean, tight, and sweet. Not just him showing up and them falling into each other's arms— she's fierce and independent and too used to taking care of herself. I like the idea that she's on the defensive makes him prove his identity. He knows all the facts about her, because he cared to know them, but facts can be faked. So he tells an anecdote that shows he really knows her, not just a memory but the person that she is— and proves it with the compass, the one with her picture in it, that he's carried with him every step of his journey.

I always wondered where that picture came from. Getting a picture of somebody was a bit more difficult before cell phone or even personal cameras. So I came up with a backstory for it where she gave it to him, ostensibly so he could actually finish a drawing of her for once, but actually because she wanted him to have it. And of course, I had to finish it off with the lines we've all been waiting for— "You're late." "I couldn't leave my best girl. Not when she still owes me a dance."

Sniff. Excuse me, I must have some dust in… both my eyes and my nose and my throat.

Also? I LOVE how many fic writers have decided that in the interest of keeping a low profile, when they get married, Steve takes Peggy's last name. "Agent and Mister Carter?" HEADCANON ACCEPTED. Perhaps "Grant Carter" would be an appropriate pseudonym?

I wrote this story as a prose piece, partially because I'm trying to practice my prose skills, and partially because the idea I had for it was so internal— it kind of called for interior narration to explore the ideas of it. I'm pretty proud of myself for actually accomplishing the task of making a very internal journey actually the structure of the plot. But I often write fan fiction in script form, in order to capture the form of cinematic originals. So I can't help but think of how much I would have to change if this were to be reconceived as a short film or something.

A lot of the nuances of interiority would be tricky to translate. A lot of what Steve was mulling over would have to be communicated in reactions and things he was looking at, which could convey the broad strokes if not all the details. I might need to turn the actual returning of the stones into something a little more active or complicated, to provide structure in the absence of Steve's inner monologue. But I think the gist of it would work— Steve goes stone by stone, punctuated by flashbacks to his conversation with Bucky, having the interactions I specified. The conversation with Bucky might have to be streamlined, though, because as it is it's rather on the long and complicated side for film scenes.

But overall it makes me happy. I'm glad I wrote it, even though it took two months of work and a fair bit of brainpower. But I think I made something good— something meaningful, that fits with a story that moved me, and actually expands on the ideas initially put forward. To my taste, that's basically perfect fan fic.

Also sequel to "As Long as He Needs" has begun! **"His Part to Play"**, part 4 of the "Forever Captain" series:

"Steve Rogers has retired to the 1940s to build a new life with Peggy. In leaving behind the mantle of Captain America, at last he's got a measure of peace. Still, Steve will never stop feeling the responsibility to step up as a hero- except he's not sure how much power his actions have at this point in the timeline. Somehow he must reconcile his new life and identity with the responsibility and burden of being a hero out of time."

If you're interested, check it out here on my profile!

Thanks so much for reading! If you're interested in more of my work, please check out my original stuff at my personal website, .com, or my steampunk stage series about a Victorian lady Batman, "Mrs. Hawking," at .com!


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